For Haitian, Mission Is to Mend Fences With Diaspora and Streamline Aid

Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Edwin Paraison, right, meets with Haitian-Americans United for Progress in Queens to discuss Haitian-Americans' contributions to the country's recovery.

By ANNE BARNARD

His mission is arguably one of the most important facing the Haitian government: reach out to members of Haiti’s global diaspora, estimated at two million people, and harness their newly urgent desire to help their country. Yet Edwin Paraison, Haiti’s minister of Haitians living abroad, is quick to acknowledge that he was handicapped even before he started.

Mr. Paraison’s ministry has 75 employees. Two died in the earthquake on Jan. 12, and 60 are homeless. His headquarters are now rubble. This week, he visited Boston, Miami, Montreal and New York — among the largest centers of Haitians living overseas — for the first time since the disaster.
Why not sooner? Because, said his chief of staff, Jean-Robert Vaval, the government would not buy him a plane ticket. With money scarce, other emergency trips by other officials — to appeal for international aid, for instance — took precedence.
That logistical hiccup in some ways reflects a larger and more longstanding confusion and frustration felt between those in need in Haiti and those uniquely eager to help. Mr. Paraison, a dapper, soft-spoken Episcopal priest, tried gamely to address those issues as he moved through New York in recent days.
Everywhere he went, Haitian-Americans packed the rooms, eager to meet him, yet skeptical that he could deliver. He has been in office only a few months, and his predecessors, by all accounts, made little headway toward mending the relations between the Haitian diaspora and the homeland.
“A lot of people have no idea what my ministry does,” Mr. Paraison admitted to about 100 Haitian community leaders who gathered on Monday to try to improve and streamline the Haitian-American response to the earthquake.
Haitians abroad contribute from $1 billion to $2 billion annually to Haiti, but they cannot vote, a legacy of political chaos and successive governments that did not want to give influence to opponents who had fled the country. Haitian-Americans complain of being told they are “not really Haitian,” and they sometimes find the country corrupt and disorganized. Some in Haiti see their American brethren as arrogant and demanding.
Mr. Paraison tried to do what he could. Diaspora groups, he said with admiration, responded no less quickly than international relief agencies, though they have far fewer resources. He estimated that 1,400 Haitian professionals — doctors, nurses, engineers — traveled to the country in the first six weeks, and those were only the ones the government knew about.
That was exactly what the crowd had come to discuss. The dimly lighted hall in Times Square — headquarters of 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, the union that represents 350,000 people from Washington to Massachusetts, a fifth of them of Haitian descent — reverberated with sweeping ambition to rebuild Haiti.
And a touch of frustration.
After the earthquake, Haitian-Americans volunteered their services in overwhelming numbers. But many found it difficult to get to Haiti or to figure out how best to help. There are various reasons: Many international relief organizations, while in need of Creole speakers, do not deploy inexperienced volunteers to disaster zones; the many smaller aid groups founded by Haitians abroad lack a unifying organization; and the Haitian government, barely functioning, has offered little help in coordinating would-be volunteers.
Mr. Paraison vowed to restructure the ministry to change that.
The meeting’s ostensible focus was to bite off a small chunk of that problem: how to harness the large number of Haitian medical professionals abroad, not only to provide emergency medical care but also to help overhaul the country’s health care system.
But it was impossible to keep out the broader tensions. One man challenged Mr. Paraison about the voting issue; a woman shushed him, saying it was inappropriate to bring that up when an estimated quarter-million people were dead. But another agreed, saying, “They think of us as a big A.T.M.”
Georges Boursiquot, a Brooklyn real estate agent who declared outside the room that Mr. Paraison’s ministry was a waste of money, demanded: “By the way, where is your office in New York? What is your phone number in New York?”
Mr. Paraison did not provide a New York number, but gave the ministry’s Web site (mhave.gouv.ht) and his personal e-mail address.
The next day, he was philosophical. “An open and authentic dialogue, that’s what is needed,” he said.
His next stop was a tiny room at Haitian-Americans United for Progress, a community group on a stretch of Linden Boulevard in Cambria Heights, Queens, dotted with Haitian salons and groceries.
Crammed in were prominent leaders: Bishop Guy A. Sansaricq of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn; Father Jean-Miguel Auguste, the pastor of St. Jerome, one of the city’s largest Haitian Catholic congregations; and Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr. There were also ordinary Haitians like Fabienne Doucet, a New York University assistant professor with a proposal. Dr. Doucet wants to create HaitiCorps, a nonprofit organization, to vet Haitian and non-Haitian professional volunteers and steer them to projects in Haiti that need them.
“That interests me!” the minister declared in French, and they exchanged business cards on the spot.
Elsie St. Louis-Accilien, the director of Haitian-Americans United for Progress, said she hoped it was just the beginning. “You are the first high official to visit us,” she said in French. “Merci, merci, merci.”
But on his way out, Father Auguste said of the minister’s outreach, “Nothing will come of it.”
Members of the diaspora, he said, should unite and “take things into our own hands.” Arrogance will not be a problem, he said. Anyone helping in Haiti has to “sleep on the streets with the people.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 12, 2010, on page A20 of the New York edition.

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Obama Pledges U.S. Aid to Haiti

By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — As the United States military steadily reduces its presence in Haiti, President Obama pledged on Wednesday to remain committed to providing financial assistance and humanitarian relief to help Haitians rebuild and recover from their devastating earthquake two months ago.
“The situation on the ground remains dire and people should be under no illusions that the crisis is over,” Mr. Obama said after meeting with President René Préval of Haiti. With spring rains ahead, he added, “the challenge is now to prevent a second disaster.”
The two leaders stood side by side in a ceremony in the Rose Garden, after a private meeting in the Oval Office, where Mr. Obama received an update on conditions in Haiti. The Navy said the hospital ship Comfort left Haiti on Wednesday for its home port, Baltimore.
Mr. Préval offered his gratitude to the United States for its “massive, spontaneous, generous help” after the earthquake on Jan. 12 that killed more than 230,000 people and left more than one million homeless. He said the tragedy should serve as a warning for the world that the effectiveness of relief efforts “must be improved.”
The Haitian government is devising a long-range reconstruction and development plan before a donors conference set for March 31 at the United Nations. Mr. Préval embraced the need for decentralization and shifting government and private facilities away from the battered capital, Port-au-Prince, and also urged the creation of a team at the United Nations that would be the disaster equivalent of peacekeepers.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that about 10,000 American military service members were still in Haiti, down from the peak of 22,000. About 4,700 are based on land, and 5,300 are on ships. The decreasing presence of the military was not a signal, Mr. Obama said, that the commitment of the United States was easing.
“America’s commitment to Haiti’s recovery and reconstruction must endure and will endure,” he said. “This pledge is one that I made at the beginning of this crisis, and I intend for America to keep our pledge. America will be your partner in the recovery and reconstruction effort.”
The Comfort was among the most visible symbols of aid in Haiti, although it could deal with only the most urgent cases among the countless thousands of Haitians needing medical care. The ship provided the most sophisticated medical care available and treated 871 patients, but Navy officials said that it had not had any patients for more than a week.
“The situation on the ground in terms of the medical situation has improved,” said Jose Ruiz, a civilian spokesman for the United States Southern Command. “Demand for medical care is not exceeding the capacity of facilities on the ground.”
Mr. Ruiz said the duties of the remaining American forces included distributing aid, removing rubble and completing engineering assessments of damaged structures. With the Haitian government and police, as well as United Nations peacekeepers, reasserting control, he said that the American forces were largely in a supporting role.
“As you declared during last month’s national day of mourning, it is time to wipe away the tears,” Mr. Obama said. “It is time for Haiti to rebuild.”
Mr. Obama lingered in the Rose Garden, as the sun poked out of the clouds, to shake hands and sign autographs for members of the search and rescue teams that worked in Haiti. He knelt down to pat a dog from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, whose team also traveled to Haiti after the earthquake.
It remained an open question how much aid the United States would provide in the months ahead. During his visit here, Mr. Préval also met with Congressional leaders from both parties. They are expected to decide upon a new aid package, the size of which is expected to be more than $1 billion.
“The international community can pledge the resources that will be necessary for a coordinated and sustained effort,” Mr. Obama said. “And working together, we can ensure that assistance not simply delivers relief for the short term, but builds up Haiti’s capacity to deliver basic services and provide for the Haitian people over the long term.”

Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

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Hospital ship USNS Comfort sailing home from Haiti

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort pulled up anchor Tuesday in Port-au-Prince and began the long trip home to Baltimore, ending its role in Operation Unified Response-Haiti.

The ship's departure brings to a close a dramatic naval mission launched three days after the Haitian earthquake Jan. 12, when the ship's crew ended scheduled maintenance midway and set sail to provide medical relief to a nation whose hospitals and clinics lay in ruins.

PHOTOS: Images from Comfort's earthquake mission

VIDEO: First-person perspective aboard Comfort

From Jan. 19 to Feb. 27, doctors treated nearly 1,000 patients, performed 843 surgeries, carried out 37 amputations, repaired dozens of bone fractures and delivered nine babies, says Capt. James Ware, the ship's commanding officer. By late February, Ware says in an e-mail, the Haitian government began working with the Pan American Health Organization and other groups to improve the medical care on shore "with the ambition of building back to pre-earthquake medical levels."

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor says the time has come to call the Comfort home. "The doctors on the USNS Comfort did a heroic job treating patients following the earthquake in Haiti and provided essential short-term support, but the Comfort is not a long-term solution," he says.

President Obama will meet with Haitian President Rene Preval today to discuss the relief effort, Vietor says.

But doctors still grappling with those who suffered injuries and infections say Haiti has a long way to go. "There's a continuing need for advanced surgical treatment," says Peter Kelly, director of Sacred Heart Hospital. "The Comfort has been doing a lot of that surgery. Now that they're pulling out, there'll be a void that will be have to be met by hospitals in Haiti."

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U.S. Troops Withdrawing From Haiti

By AP / BEN FOX and JENNIFER KAY

(PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) — U.S. troops are withdrawing from the shattered capital, leaving many Haitians anxious that the most visible portion of international aid is ending even as the city is still mired in misery and vulnerable to unrest.
As troops packed their duffels and began to fly home this weekend, Haitians and some aid workers wondered whether U.N. peacekeepers and local police are up to the task of maintaining order. More than a half-million people still live in vast encampments that have grown more unpleasant in recent days with the early onset of the rainy season. (See TIME's complete coverage of the Haiti earthquake.)
Some also fear the departure of the American troops is a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people following the catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake.
"I would like for them to stay in Haiti until they rebuild the country and everybody can go back to their house," said Marjorie Louis, a 27-year-old mother of two, as she warmed a bowl of beans for her family over a charcoal fire on the fake grass of the national stadium.
U.S. officials say the long-anticipated draw down of troops is not a sign of waning commitment to Haiti, only a change in the nature of the operation. Security will now be the responsibility of the 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force and the Haitian police.
A smaller number of U.S. forces — the exact number has not yet been determined — will be needed as the U.N. and Haitian government reassert control, said Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, which runs the Haiti operation.
"Our mission is largely accomplished," Fraser said.
American forces arrived in the immediate aftermath of the quake to treat the wounded, provide emergency water and rations and help prevent a feared outbreak of violence among desperate survivors. They also helped reopen the airport and seaport.
There has been no widespread violence but security is a real issue. A U.N. food convoy traveling from Gonaives to Dessalines on Friday was stopped and overrun by people, who looted two trucks before peacekeepers regained control, U.N. officials said.
They managed to escort the other two back to Gonaives. There were no reports of injuries.
The military operation was criticized by some Haitian senators and foreign leaders as heavy-handed and inappropriate in a country that had been occupied by American forces for nearly two decades in the early 20th century. But ordinary Haitians largely welcomed the troops, many out of disenchantment with their own government.
"They should stay because they have been doing a good job," 35-year-old Lesly Pierre said as his family prepared dinner under a tarp at an encampment in Petionville. "If it was up to our government, we wouldn't have gotten any help at all."
U.S. soldiers said they had nothing but warm encounters with the Haitian people.
"They're real good people. They just want help," Army Private First Class Troy Sims, a 19-year-old from Fresno, California, said as he prepared to board a flight back to the U.S. "I feel that us being here helped a lot. If we weren't here, things probably would have gotten out of control."
There are now about 11,000 troops, more than half of them on ships just off the coast, down from a peak of around 20,000 on Feb. 1. The total is expected to drop to about 8,000 in coming days as the withdrawal gathers steam. The military said more than 700 paratroopers left this weekend.
Soldiers are now gone from the General Hospital, where they once directed traffic and kept order amid the chaos of mass casualties. There are no more Haitian patients on board the USNS Comfort, which treated 8,600 people after the quake. At a country club in Petionville, where some 100,000 Haitians are living in rough shelters in a muddy ravine, only a few soldiers remain of the several hundred there after the disaster.
Alison Thompson said she was nervous about the smaller U.S. troop contingent.
"Soon we are not going to have any security," said Thompson, medical coordinator of the Jenkins/Penn Relief Organization, which runs a field hospital at the edge of the ravine. "Everybody is just so worried that they are pulling out because it's going to get dangerous."
It was the same concern for Louis at the national stadium.
"If the troublemakers see that there is some kind of force here, they will think twice before they do anything," she said. "They are already getting ready to stir up trouble."
But Ted Constan, chief program officer for Partners in Health, said that the way to address security is to get adequate shelter and other aid to the hundreds of thousands of people who are now stranded in squalid encampments.
"The real solution is to deliver services ... rather than turn Haiti into a military state," he said.

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Haiti Is Muse for Many Musicians

The Earthquake in Haiti Has Set Off a Multidude of Musical Releases to Raise Money for Relief Efforts

• In this Feb. 1, 2010 file photo provided by WATW, singers and celebrities, including Barbra Streisand, center, perform at the "We Are The World 25 Years for Haiti" recording session held at Jim Henson Studios on Feb. 1, 2010 in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.  (AP Photo/WATW, Kevin Mazur)
  

• Photo Essay Hope for Haiti The world's biggest stars lend their voices to help Haiti.
  
• Photo Essay Haiti: A Local's Perspective A photographer documents his country's struggle to rebuild after a devastating earthquake
  

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(AP)  When Kirk Franklin saw the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti, he immediately reacted through song. In a matter of days, the Grammy-winning gospel star enlisted some of the genre's top stars to record a charity single to help with relief efforts.

"You want to respond based on what it is you know to do," he said of "Are You Listening," recorded by more than two dozen artists under the moniker Artists United for Haiti.

They were hardly the only ones. Since the Jan. 12 earthquake, there has been a flood of musical odes and projects for Haiti. While other tragedies have inspired telethons, concerts and charity songs, it seems as if Haiti's misfortune has caused a musical overflow.

There's the all-star "We Are the World" remake that debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (there is also a Spanish-language version with Latin stars); the Jay-Z, Bono, The Edge and Rihanna charity single, "Stranded (Mon Amour Haiti)"; the Simon Cowell-produced remake of "Everybody Hurts," featuring Susan Boyle, Mariah Carey, Michael Buble and others; the digital album "Download to Donate for Haiti," featuring unreleased tracks by Jack Johnson, the Dave Matthews Band and others, presented by the Linkin Park-led Music for Relief; the Nas and Damian Marley song "The Strong Will Continue"; and Eddie Vedder's remake of "My City of Ruin."

Retail store American Outfitters and Filter magazine have released a music CD for Haiti available in all American Eagle stores, and Jamaican artists including Maxi Priest and Barrington Levy and Toots have put out the single "Listen2theCall." There's also the "Hope for Haiti Now" CD, featuring music from the telethon, which was a top seller on iTunes; several songs from the telethon rose on the Billboard charts.

"I know there's a lot of people on it, but that's not a bad thing," said Quincy Jones of the musical efforts for Haiti. He orchestrated the first "We Are the World," session 25 years ago, and the latest rendition, which features Barbra Streisand, Lil Wayne, Miley Cyrus, Wyclef Jean and dozens of other music stars.

"It's the kind of thing everybody should contribute to and let everything fall where it may," Jones said.

Among the songs available on Amazon.com is will.i.am's remix of The Who's "My Generation," featuring Slash.

"The response has been very strong from the music community," said Kristin Smith, senior manager of digital music at Amazon, comparing the artistic output to that seen after the tragedies of Katrina and 9/11. "It has been very generous in terms of what artists have done."

It's also come about very quickly. Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda managed to cobble an entire album of new material for the organization Music for Relief in a matter of days with help from other artists who donated tracks for the project.

"It really showed that if you really want to do something and time is of the essence, the music industry can really mobilize and get something great together quickly," he said. "That's a product of people's will to do it and it's a product of the technology that we've got at our fingertips."

David Saltzman, executive director of the Robin Hood Foundation and one of the advisers for the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon, said there are more musical efforts today to help Haiti than for past tragedies because of how easy it is to record and share music.

"More artists who feel compelled to do something can get their music in the hands of people who are excited about purchasing it and saving lives," he said.

But Franklin wonders if it can be too much and worries that with a multitude of releases, some good efforts might get lost.

"Sometimes, when we have too many, when it becomes too fragmented, sometimes it can lose its power," he said. "But you've still got to let people move and do what's in their hearts. You've got to do what's in your heart and not respond to the numbers."

Shinoda said he had some concerns that his project, which is still being added to by artists online, could get lost, but thinks that fans who know what they want will find it.

"Hopefully, the stuff that you like filters to the top and you can listen to that, or you have a way of searching through all the madness and finding the stuff that you like," he said.

Carlos Santana, who was on the "We Are the World" remake, thinks it can never be too much if it's helping save lives.

"The tsunami or Katrina or this situation experienced in Haiti," he said, is an indication "for all of us as humans to take care of one another. There will be other ones and anything we can use with music ... is always welcomed. It's never enough to be of service to humanity. It's never enough."

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY 
© MMX, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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